COPPA & WAI:
New Hurdles Point Out Solid Lessons

Two new legal hurdles have surfaced on the Web recently, and it's
Web developers and Web masters that will have to overcome them.
These hurdles, COPPA (the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act)
and the WAI (the Web Accessibility Initiative), have laid out an
additional set of usability requirements for Web sites. Rather
than being burdensome, however, the Web development community
should view these additional usability requirements as being an
opportunity and impetus - both to make their sites more accessible
to everyone, disabled or not, as well as more privacy sensitive.

What is COPPA?

The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) went into
effect on April 21st in the United States. This act intends to
protect children on the Internet, from both individuals that may
be using their personal information in inappropriate ways
(cyberstalking, etc.), as well as from predatory advertising and
business tactics.

In a nutshell, COPPA provisions require that a Web site obtain
permission from parents before collecting any personal data from
their children who are younger than 13. Additionally, Web sites
must provide parents with a means of controlling that information
in the future; i.e., provide them with a way to revoke their
permission and remove the child's information from the Web site
owner at any time. There are some exceptions to these regulations
(a parent's permission is not required if the site is collecting
a child's email address for a one-time response to a request for
information), but that's the gist of it.

The Federal Trade Commission has launched a Web site
(www.ftc.gov/kidsprivacy) which provides kids, parents and
Web professionals with information on what the new law means to
them, and how to respond to it.

What is the WAI?

Recently, several legal events have brought issues of Web
accessibility to the forefront of the attention of various
standards bodies.

First of all, the U.S. Government has moved to start implementing
a 1998 amendment to the Rehabilitation Act, called section 508.
Section 508 requires that any technology the federal government
buys or uses must be accessible to people with disabilities. The
section also states that Web sites erected by U.S. government
departments and agencies must be accessible to people with
physical, sensory, and cognitive disabilities.
(www.itpolicy.gsa.gov/cita/508.htm)

Second of all, recent legal cases have suggested that the Americans
with Disabilities Act may apply to issues of Internet and Web
accessibility. Last November, the National Federation of the Blind
(NFB) sued AOL under the ADA for refusing to adapt its frontend to
run on specialized systems that convert electronic information into
Braille or voice-based systems.
(news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-1429691.html)

In response to these and many other related issues, the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C) has been working with industry and governments
to come up with a set of recommendations to make the Web more
accessible to all users. This initiative is called the Web
Accessibility Initiative (WAI), and a Proposed Recommendation of
User Agent Accessibility Guidelines was released on March 10th of
this year. (www.w3.org/TR/UAAG/)

In addition, in February, the W3C put its final stamp of approval
on the Authoring Tools Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 (ATAG),
proposed in November, 1999. These guidelines seek to guide
creators of HTML editors and other Web authoring tools towards
adding automatic accessibility compatibility into the code that
their products produce. (www.w3.org/TR/ATAG10/)